Former Los Gatos Mayor Steve Rice posted an interesting blurb on his Facebook page the other day about multiple vote-by-mail ballots he received for last June’s primary election and for the Nov. 8 election. In addition to his own ballot, Rice received ballots for his mother, father and son.

“When our vote-by-mail ballots showed up for the June primary, I received three extra ballots at our home: one for my mother, who passed away a year before; one for my son, who moved out of state two years before; and one for my father,” Rice wrote. “I called the Registrar of Voters and asked what I should do. I was told to write ‘deceased’ on my mother’s ballot and ‘moved out of state’ on my son’s ballot, and return them unopened to the registrar.”

But then it happened all over again a few weeks ago.

Seems that when Rice’s mother passed away, he filed a change of address with the postal service to have both his parents’ mail sent to his home. The Registrar’s office said that triggered a process that automatically changes a person’s registration when they move within Santa Clara County’s borders.

“What happens is we confirm with the post office that the change of address is correct,” said Anita Torres, communications specialist for the Registrar of Voters. “If it’s correct, we change their registration to match their change of address.”

That explains why Rice received both his parents’ ballots. But the reasons behind his mother’s ballot are even more complicated. “We receive a list from the county of residents who have died,” Torres said. “We make sure the name and date of birth match. If they do, we remove them from the rolls.”

Problem is, birthdates weren’t required when Rice’s mother last registered to vote in 1970. “When we received the county list, her birthday didn’t match because we had assigned her an incorrect ‘dummy’ birthday,” Torres said.

The dummy birthdate that’s assigned in these cases is Jan. 1, 1931.

“We didn’t want to accidentally cancel her registration, so we left it as is,” she said.

As for the out-of-state son’s registration, Torres thinks that’s an isolated case. “We’re not really sure what happened,” she said.

Torres added that counties within California talk to each other to avoid duplicate registrations, but that communication doesn’t extend beyond the state’s borders, which makes the problem a nationwide issue.

In a February 2012 report, the Pew Center on the States estimated that 24 million voter registrations in the United States were no longer valid or were “significantly inaccurate.” The report went on to say that more than 1.8 million deceased individuals were listed as voters and approximately 2.75 million people were registered in more than one state. Pew attributed the problems to mobility, strained government budgets and outdated technology.

As of Oct. 31, there were just over 875,000 registered voters in Santa Clara County. More than 635,000 of those are permanent vote-by-mail voters.

The vote-by-mail envelopes require a voter’s signature, which is one of the safeguards Torres said the registrar uses to ensure a ballot’s validity. “We have a person who’s trained to look at the signature on the envelope and compare it with the signature on the voter’s original registration affidavit,” she said.

If the signatures don’t match, the ballot isn’t counted.

She added that “we look for fraud” after each election and said the most common type of fraud is double voting. That’s when someone votes by mail and also votes at a polling place. “We don’t believe there’s a high incidence of fraud in Santa Clara County,” Torres said.

After the June primary, the registrar sent the district attorney’s office the names of fewer than 100 people who were suspected of double voting. “That was a huge spike. We usually have fewer than 10 cases of double voting,” Torres said.

She attributed the spike to voter confusion.

As for his father’s November ballot, Rice simply took it to him. But the elder Rice lives in unincorporated Los Gatos, so he technically wasn’t eligible to vote on the town council race or the transient occupancy tax that were listed on his in-town ballot.

Rice said his dad followed the rules and did not vote on those items.

He added, “But it makes you wonder. How many ballots like these get cast?”

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